'In the Heights': Hitting the high notes

A chat with ‘In the Heights’ main man, Lin-Manuel Miranda

The high-energy, hip-hop-influenced “In the Heights” was the toast of Broadway two years ago, taking home four Tony Awards. Now, it is on the road, and the touring production hits San Diego next week. Joan Marcus
— Joan Marcus

The high-energy, hip-hop-influenced “In the Heights” was the toast of Broadway two years ago, taking home four Tony Awards. Now, it is on the road, and the touring production hits San Diego next week. Joan Marcus
— Joan Marcus

It scaled the heights of Broadway two years ago, winning four Tony Awards, earning a slot as a Pulitzer finalist and planting the flag for hip-hop in mainstream musicals. Now “In the Heights” is on the road, in a tour that visits San Diego next week.

Washington Heights: A diverse neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge; the community is the musical’s setting and namesake.

Piragua: A Puerto Rican shaved-ice treat flavored with fruit syrup; the “piragua guy” and his cart make frequent appearances in the show.

96,000: The value, in dollars, of a winning lottery ticket someone in the neighborhood has purchased.

Usnavi: The show’s main character, a young, Dominican-born bodega owner; his parents took the name from a passing ship bearing the words “U.S. Navy.”

Light and sweet: How Usnavi’s customers like their coffee.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the propulsive show’s creator, composer-lyricist and original star, rejoined the show for its L.A. run, but — no me diga! (to borrow from a “Heights” song title meaning “say it ain’t so” — won’t be appearing here.

Still, Miranda’s mark is all over the musical about life, strife and sweet café con leche in a vibrant, multiethnic New York neighborhood. And the man’s been busy lately — working on a film version of “Heights,” co-composing a musical that riffs on the “Bring It On” cheerleading flicks, rapping about Alexander Hamilton for the president and witnessing a “flash mob” of 400 people perform the song “96,000” for him in L.A.

Somewhere in there, Miranda took a few moments to talk by phone about where the show’s been and what’s up next:

On checking back in with his old friend Usnavi: “It’s fun to play Usnavi without the pressures that come with mounting a Broadway musical. I was wearing five hats at once the last time we did this, and I was worrying about reviews and I was worrying about rewrites. And now it’s just the joy of getting to step into this guy’s shoes and play for two hours every day.”

On updating the lyrics with the line “Arizona be hatin’ ” (a reference to the state’s controversial immigration law): “The original line was, ‘Politicians be hatin’.’ And then (Arizona) Gov. Brewer decided to make herself the poster girl for anti-immigrant sentiment. So, our lyric looked toothless in light of the way the world had changed. That’s not me trying to get all political. That’s me making a lyric that already existed sharper.”

On his rap as President Hamilton’s fatal foe Aaron Burr (part of a work-in-progress called “The Hamilton Mixtape”) at the White House Poetry Jam last year: “It was a very premature birth. I had been working on that song for about eight months and I was midway into a second song in the same series when the White House called and said, ‘Do you have anything you could perform about America?’ And I had a rap song about a founding father in my back pocket.”

On whether stage musicals have lately attained a new level of respect and regard: “That question is a bit above my pay grade. My job is to write ’em. It’s other people’s jobs to place them in that kind of historical context. (But) I really am enjoying the fact that musicals again are becoming part of the national conversation. Suddenly, music and storytelling — it’s becoming important again.”